


Rewrite All the Rules

by Vagrant_Blvrd



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe- GTA V, Fake AH Crew, Gen, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-07-23
Packaged: 2018-11-20 02:08:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,390
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11326440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vagrant_Blvrd/pseuds/Vagrant_Blvrd
Summary: A series of fics and ficlets based onthis list.





	1. A Gentle Thing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ryan stumbles into their room, exhausted after the latest job Geoff sent him on. He's been gone for a week, chasing down a former ally turned rat, and life has been so much more boring without him there. No one else entertains Gavin's hypotheticals the way Ryan does, bantering and bickering and breaking it down to science. Will insist he has the right of it even if doesn't, won't back down unless someone counters with actual facts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. -How do they fall asleep? Wake up? Any daily rituals?

Ryan stumbles into their room, exhausted after the latest job Geoff sent him on. He's been gone for a week, chasing down a former ally turned rat, and life has been so much more boring without him there. No one else entertains Gavin's hypotheticals the way Ryan does, bantering and bickering and breaking it down to science. Will insist he has the right of it even if doesn't, won't back down unless someone counters with actual facts. 

Gavin's missed him.

Feels a smile pulling at his lips as Ryan bangs his foot against the foot of the bed, hissing sharply and swearing, hair hanging loose around his face as he wiggles his toes to see if he's broken them. Gavin can see him pouting, as if this is an unexpected betrayal of some kind.

Watching him, no one could possibly mistake him for _the_ Vagabond, this walking human disaster of a man who stubs his toes in the dark and wears sleep pants so worn there are holes in them. Who wears an old t-shirt to bed with a logo so faded there's no way to determine what it once said, image fading more with passing year.

Gavin's asked after it multiple times, but Ryan won't tell him. Refuses to. Smirk on his face because he knows Gavin won't give in on this, will go weeks, months at a time before trying to get the answer out of Ryan, or even a sliver of a hint, but so far he's met with ugly failure.

It's infuriating, really. No search engine or anonymous posts on online forums asking if anyone recognizes the shirt in question has gleaned him so much as a breadcrumb, a starting point.

“You ever going to tell me where this abomination of a shirt came from?” Gavin asks, plucking at the logo resting over Ryan's heart when the oaf flops down next to him.

Ryan turns his head to look at him, soft smile on his face. “Nah.”

Gavin rolls his eyes, because of course he won't. This is as much of a game ass Gavin trying to guess the contents of the safe houses Ryan has scattered across Los Santos. The ones he keeps because he's been in this life for a long time now, has seen the rise and fall of so many crews like theirs in Los Santos. Is always waiting for that shoe to drop, as the saying goes. For the floor to fall out from under their feet, leave them scrambling for solid ground.

“I'll find out one of these days,” Gavin promises, the same way he has for years now as he moves closer to Ryan, feels the heat coming off him. “You'll see.”

Ryan hums agreeably, smile widening slightly as he holds still, letting Gavin arrange him as he wants, fussy and grumbling to himself when the oaf just lays there like a log, amusement rolling off him.

“You're a right prick, Ryan,” Gavin mutters, squawking as Ryan pulls him close to press a kiss to his cheek, quiet laughter rumbling out of him. “Ryan!”

“Shh,” Ryan says, and now he's manhandling Gavin, just a bit. Undoing all his work from earlier. “Time for sleep-sleeps.”

Gavin stares into the darkness because this. 

_This_ is the vaunted Vagabond. 

Cuddling like an overgrown puppy and using words like 'sleep-sleeps'.

“Unbelievable,” Gavin murmurs as Ryan's breathing starts to slow, hand curling around the arm across his chest. “Simply unbelievable.”


	2. Whatever You Call It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's a well-known fact in Los Santos that when Geoff Ramsey send the two of them out together, they get results. Whether it be through Gavin's clever tongue and sharp mind, or Ryan's quietly menacing figure, his bloody handiwork, _they get results_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2\. - How’s their team work? Do they share well?

The Vagabond and Ramsey's Golden boy make for an effective team, their reputations preceding them.

It's a well-known fact in Los Santos that when Geoff Ramsey send the two of them out together, they get results. Whether it be through Gavin's clever tongue and sharp mind, or Ryan's quietly menacing figure, his bloody handiwork, _they get results_.

A less well-known fact, something known only to a select few, is they're a goddamned nightmare together.

Ryan knows, it, Gavin knows it. Everyone in the fucking crew knows it.

They're a terrible duo within the crew. A pair of mischief makers and agents of chaos who egg each other into doing more and more outrageous things for the sheer entertainment value. (For science, they claim, but that's a boldfaced lie coming from complete assholes.)

The Fakes have a seemingly infinite combination of teams withing the larger group.

Los Santos goes silent when Team Nice Dynamite is on the loose, familiar now with the sheer destructive capability of Gavin and Michael working together. Giggling like schoolkids as Gavin challenges Michael with stupid bets and dares that more often than not he'll accept. Gleam in his eye that says he's not fucking backing down, won't chicken out, get your fucking money ready, Gav.

Team Love and Stuff is terrible, horrible. Worst thing to come out of forming this travesty of a crew.

It's Gavin convincing Ryan to hit bikers when they're on the way to a heist. It's Gavin laughing like a stupid kid when Ryan does something ridiculous and outrageous and no doubt horrific. It's the two of them going out and pulling stupid shit on heists, on simple fucking jobs, that has Geoff going gray long before his time.

Has him pacing the floor of the waiting room to the hospital where they have _people_ for situations like this. Injuries too serious to patch up on the run or back a the penthouse. That require surgery, the rest of the crew looking anxious and angry and lost.

Eventually Caleb comes out of the operating room, blood on his scrubs. Geoff can feel the eyes of his crew, his idiot family, on his back, and breathes a sigh of relief when Caleb gives them the news. 

That his two problem children made it out of surgery just fine, that they'll be awake to be yelled at soon. That they somehow defied the odds once again.

Caleb's smile is wry and tired, and Geoff laps a hand on his shoulder and thanks him, voice rough as he tells him to get some rest. That he's fucking well earned it after this.

Geoff stands back, lets the lads go ahead of him to check on those two morons. Reassure themselves that Gavin and Ryan haven't managed to get themselves killed just yet.

“You stupid fucks,” Geoff mutters, low and angry and tired. “You had one job. One fucking job.”

Get in, get the intel, get out.

See? Fucking simple, or it should have been if their own intel had been good. If there wasn't a goddamned rat in the mix, feeding them bad information that almost got two of his crew killed. Had them pinned down, trapped, the rest of the crew bogged down fighting their way clear of police and FIB agents and unable to help.

They'd made it out, though. Through sheer bullheaded stubbornness and determination not to die in a shitty office building wearing shitty disguises. Because Ryan would never leave one of them behind, let alone Gavin, and Gavin had no fucking patience at all for heroic sacrifices. Because they're two giant pains in his ass who specialize in giving him stress ulcers.

Fucking idiots, both of them.


	3. The Seams Are Torn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gavin is a bit of an enigma to Ryan.
> 
> It's difficult, sometimes, for him to resolve the grinning, devil-may-care idiot with the steely-eyed motherfucker with steady hands and a ruthless streak to rival his when it comes to protecting the things he cares about.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 6\. - Any tasks that are always left to one person?

Gavin is a bit of an enigma to Ryan.

It's difficult, sometimes, for him to resolve the grinning, devil-may-care idiot with the steel-eyed motherfucker with steady hands and a ruthless streak to rival his when it comes to protecting the things he cares about. 

Ryan knows that kind of ruthlessness well. The kind that makes the hard choices when others can't, won't, and maybe it damns them a little bit more each time but it seems that's a price they're both willing to pay.

Geoff is cold, hard, when he needs to be. Can make a choice for the good of the crew even if it costs, but every time he does it leaves a mark. Sends him searching for redemption he's never going to find at the bottom of a bottle. Jack is a professional, knows damn well the things they do aren't nice, aren't pretty, but he draws a line long before the others do. Michael is fury and fire and passion, but it burns out when it comes to the things Ryan, Gavi, have done, had to do, and there's no shame in it. 

Jeremy hasn't crossed the line yet, but he's on the edge. Just one gentle push from falling over to their side of it, and Ryan and Gavin do what they can to make sure that doesn't happen because Jeremy deserves better than that.

Better that they carry that burden than the others, the two of them, with their masks. Both broken in ways the others could never understand, and God, it had taken Ryan so long to see it, to realize.

“There, there, love,” Gavin says. Something soft, gentle in his voice as he pats the poor bastard's cheek lightly, hands covered in the man's blood. “That wasn't so hard now was it?”

There's a soft wheezing coming from the mess of a man in front of them, soft drip of blood falling on the floor of the empty office. The man's making a pained noise, low, terrified, as he stares at Gavin.

Spatters of blood on Gavin's face, on that designer shirt he'd bought earlier in the week for his part in the heist that had gone so horribly wrong. Left Michael with a bullet in his leg, and Jack with a slew of injuries from the crash. Left Jeremy with a broken arm, and Geoff with a fractured cheekbone and too many damn stitches marching along his jaw into his hairline. All of them lucky to be alive, although you wouldn't think it to hear them bitching.

Ryan shifts, drawing the man's attention. He can see the way the man's breathing picks up, like he'd forgotten Ryan was there. Los Santos' very own bogeyman, and he'd forgotten him in favor of Gavin. 

Ramsey's Golden Boy, all flash and no substance and voted most likely to shoot himself in the foot, according to Michael and Geoff when they're being unkind.

Gavin throws a look over his shoulder at Ryan, eyebrow raised as the corner of his mouth ticks up. Something mean, _dark_ in it as he turns his attention back on the poor bastard slowly bleeding his life away.

“Just imagine,” Gavin says, goddamn _coos_. “Just imagine love, if the Vagabond over there had gotten his hands on you.”

Borderline cruel with the way the man's eyes widen in panic, scrabbling uselessly against the restraints binding his arms to the chair. Breathing so fast he starts to hyperventilate because Gavin? 

Oh, Gavin's done a number on the poor bastard.

Gotten them all the information they'd needed to track down the people who'd sold them out, every last one of them, but it hadn't been clean. Hadn't been easy.

Gavin grins, and stands.

“I need to call Geoff,” he says, brushing at imaginary lint on his shirt. “You mind finishing up here?”

Ryan nods, looking at the man, who's eyes are so wide he can see the white around the irises. “My pleasure.”

He means it more now than any other times he's said the words, played up his reputation and done what needed to be done because that's how it works in their world. How Los Santos works, but this time.

This little bastard is one of the ones who got their crew, their family hurt. Almost killed them. 

It's one thing when shit goes wrong because of botched timing, or sheer dumb luck, but when someone actively sets out to screw them over, get them killed? Well that's another thing altogether, isn't it?

Ryan follows Gavin's slow, steady progress as he leaves the office, impressed in spite of himself. Gavin's hiding a limp, and it's easy for Ryan to read the way pain has his shoulders drawn tight, back impossibly straight to take the strain off his injuries. 

Ryan's right arm hangs useless in a sling, teeth locked tight against the pain from his broken collar bone and other injuries he hasn't bothered to pinpoint because none of it mattered when they were the last two standing, however unsteadily, after everything. 

He hates this, that his own injuries made it necessary for Gavin to take over this little interrogation session. Hates that he wouldn't have been able to put enough force into it, into making this bastard hurt, break, to get what they needed. Hates that that dirty little job had ended up in Gavin's hands this time around.

The man's watching him, and honestly, the way he's acting Ryan probably doesn't have to touch him to kill him. Just let him hyperventilate until he passes out and dies from bloodloss and call it good, _but_.

“See you in hell,” Ryan says, quiet, clear, because there's no way this bastard isn't headed there after everything he's done, and God knows there's a special place there for Ryan for what he's done, what he will do in the future if it means keeping the crew safe.

The man starts protesting, _pleading_ , the way Gavin had over the comms, begging the others to fucking answer, just one fucking word, after things had gone to shit, but Ryan isn't listening. Isn't interested in whatever deal he's trying to swing, what he's trying to offer Ryan in exchange for his small, pitiful life.

Ryan may not have had the strength to wring answers from this bastard. Body weak where his mind isn't, but it doesn't take a lot of physical strength to pull a trigger, now does it? Anyone can do it, it's just that easy.

It's the rest that makes it hard. 

The moral implications of taking a life, heavy weight that pulls on you, drags you down for the rest of yours because you decided your life or some other fucking thing was more important than someone else's, and that's something that _should_ stick with you. Make you think about it before you do it a second time, or a third, or however many times you pull that trigger or use that knife or whatever method you use to end a life.

But Ryan, see.

He stopped thinking about that kind of shit a long time ago. Stopped letting that weight pull him down when bastards like this guy started coming after the people he cares about. 

Ryan pulls out his gun and aims, does a little countdown because that's how thing like this go, isn't it? 

Draw out the tension, the suspense a bit little longer. 

_3,_

Let him see it coming before it happens. 

_2,_

Let it really sink in that there's no last minute rescue coming, not for this bastard.

 _1._

Ryan pulls the trigger, easy as anything.


	4. Burn Bright

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It takes time in their world to build up a reputation. The kind that has people whispering your name and looking over their shoulder as if they're afraid just doing so will conjure you up like a demon or creature out of nightmare. The kind that make people think twice before crossing you, if it's worth the trouble it'll bring to their door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's a combination of these two:
> 
> 4\. - First impression of each other? Was it love at first sight?
> 
> 5\. - Nicknames? Pet names? Any in-jokes?

It takes time in their world to build up a reputation. The kind that has people whispering your name and looking over their shoulder as if they're afraid just doing so will conjure you up like a demon or creature out of nightmare. The kind that make people think twice before crossing you, if it's worth the trouble it'll bring to their door.

Before then, there are setbacks and problems. From the inconsequential to the kind that stand to get you killed if you're not careful. The kind that ends a career before it so much as gets its footing.

So of course, _of course_ , Ryan meets Ramsey's infamous Golden Boy long before either of them have cemented their own reputations.

When Ryan's just another hired gun out there. Maybe a better shot than most, capable of remaining level-headed when things turn to shit, but nothing that really sets him apart from all the others like him out there. (Yet.)

When the Golden Boy is just some fast-talking brat only starting to realize his potential. Not quite able to talk himself out of the increasingly dangerous situations he gets himself into with alarming frequency. (Yet.)

They go back a ways, the two of them. Long before Ryan gets his mask, before Gavin carefully, painstakingly crafts the armor that becomes the Golden Boy. Before Ramsey's empire takes shape, before _everything_.

========

Ryan's never had the taste for inflicting pain on someone just because he could. Because he was bigger, stronger, but that doesn't mean he isn't good at it when the situation calls for it.

This one doesn't.

Instead, Ryan is the hired muscle here. Silent and watchful. The looming threat in the shadows as some some small-time gang leader encourages his men (boys, really) who do have the taste for it to get some scrawny kid to talk. Spill what he knows about a rival gang.

It's pitiful, this, Ryan realizes. 

Watching them use tactics they must have gotten out of bad movies and television shows. Things that do too much damage too fast. That hurt fast and sharp and brutal, but don't linger. Don't set the kind of fear into the kid they should be aiming for if they want anything of worth out of him. (That Ryan knows this innately, makes him feel a little ill. Uneasy that something like that is in him, even as he mentally critiques them.)

He's reluctantly impressed by the kid. Still sassy and mouthy even after several days of this. 

Broken and bloody in body but not in spirit. Never clearer in the way he can see the kid working his nails into the seams of the armor his tormentors wear. 

All bravado and false confidence born from a life of being bigger and meaner than the people they come up against. Weak and flimsy against any real threat, and the kid knows. Can see it so very plainly even as he takes advantage of their stupidity and lazy arrogance.

Ryan catches the kid eyeing him sometimes, when the idiots are gone and he's working on getting his breathing slow and level. A faint rasping wheeze to it that makes Ryan keep a closer eye on him, just in case.

The kid is interesting, and then there's the mystery of that accent of his. 

Something about it very subtly off, but Ryan can't place it. Too much Texas twang, not enough drawl, Ryan doesn't know. Only knows it slips when the two of them are alone. The kid fighting through pain to get to a kind of normal where he can think, can fucking scheme.

And he is, Ryan knows.

“You look like a guy with good head on your shoulders.”

It's the beginning of a spiel. Start with flattery, pry your target open as you go to get to the heart of him. See what makes him tick and use it against him.

Trying to turn Ryan to his side when in fact Ryan isn't on a side at the moment. He's only here because of favors owed, the kind that eats away at him even now. The kind that means Ryan will remember every slight, every humiliation when those debts are paid.

Ryan looks at the kid. Sees the crooked little smile, teeth stained with blood and wonders how much longer he can hold out, how much patience his captors have left.

“You've got a mouth on you,” he says, and despite himself it comes out a little impressed, which causes the smile to widen. 

“It's a gift.” 

Ryan rolls his eyes, doesn't tell the idiot it's going to get him killed because look where they are right now. Look what the idiot's gotten himself into.

He doesn't ask why the kid's so damn loyal to people who have clearly written him off. Doesn't ask why he doesn't fucking spill already, when they both know it's going to be Ryan who puts him down in the end.

Or would have been, if things didn't turn to shit when Ryan's employers try to fuck Ryan over. Thought his price was too high. Thought, so very stupidly, that even if he was starting to gain a reputation for himself, it would be easy to get rid of someone like him. Just another hired gun like any other in Los Santos after all, wasn't he.

And Ryan?

Well, Ryan decides enough is enough and any debts he may have owed are invalid. 

========

The kid looks up at him when Ryan opens the door to the room they've been keeping him in. Gives Ryan that crooked little smile of his when he realizes Ryan's alone. Eyes flicking towards the door, and yes, fine. There was a hell of a lot of gunfire taking place earlier, and only Ryan walking in here.

Simple math, really.

“Shut up,” Ryan says, ignoring the idiot's quiet laugh as he leans over to undo the cuffs and hauls him up out of that fucking chair to get him out of the hellhole he's been held in for over a week. 

“Sure, sure,” the kid says, no goddamned fear in his voice the way there should be, given everything that's happened.

========

It's been years, life and experience turning Ryan into the kind of thing he never could have expected, but then that's the price of a reputation in a city like Los Santos, isn't it.

Ryan's a bogeyman who hunts down other monsters for the right price. He's the kind of person who does a lot of things for the right price, actually. Somewhere along the line he's started wearing a mask, and added face paint under it because things like that have an impact in a city like Los Santos. 

Red for the blood he's spilled. White for the bones he breaks with his bare hands. Black for the color of his soul, or so the rumors go. (No one knows where they come from but everyone knows them, and that's enough to build a reputation on.)

One day Ryan's current employer tells him they have Ramsey's Golden Boy. That this is it, the key to bringing Ramsey's little empire to its knees.

Ryan doesn't care about that, though. The way the guy keeps boasting and bragging, like he had anything to do with catching the Golden Boy because - 

Ryan knows him, Ramsey's Golden Boy.

The accent is different, but he knows that voice. Thinks, _ah, so that's why_ when he hears that soft British accent, slurred by a split lip.

Sees a little how the kid's earned his own reputation in the way his eyes follow Ryan when he walks into the room, narrowing slightly in contemplation. Scheming already, planning and plotting and not a speck of fear in his eyes in spite of his current circumstances.

Ryan knows he cuts an imposing figure. Tall and broad, dark leather, and that mask of his, because there's theater in his background and goddamned if it doesn't work in this world.

“You know the Vagabond, I see,” Ryan's employer purrs, like so many have before. Like he thinks Ryan's on his side in this. “Excellent.”

The kid gives the man a flat, unimpressed look. 

“Everyone knows the Vagabond,” he says, an implied, _you idiot_ in there that has Ryan smiling under his mask.

The sass nets him an open-handed blow across his cheek, but he just rolls with it, which. 

Nice, _nice_.

Ryan watches as his employer tries to convince Ramsey's Golden Boy to talk. Clumsily and ham-handed and absolutely no finesse to it - and the thing of it is, he does.

He's Ramsey's Golden Boy, though, and so he deals out insults and pithy quips and clever little lies, and through it all demonstrates the skills of someone who knows how to take a hit. Who's either learned the hard way or been trained against this kind of thing, and that just makes him even more interesting to Ryan.

“You haven't changed much,” Ryan says, left alone with the Golden Boy while his employer seethes over his stubbornness. Infuriated and coming dangerously close to taking drastic measures. “Still got a mouth on you.”

The Golden Boy cocks his head. Studying Ryan, and after a long moment smiles in spite of his split lip, blood running down his face. This small, crooked thing hardly daring to believe because Ryan wears a mask now and face paint under it. They're both different people from the ones who met years ago under startlingly similar circumstances, but some things hold true.

“You look like a guy with a good head on his shoulders.”

Ryan snorts, the Golden Boy laughs, and outside all hell breaks loose.

Gunfire and explosions and yelling. 

Ryan looks over at Ramsey's Golden Boy, who's sitting up straighter in the chair, smirk on his face.

“Took them long enough.”

Ryan rolls his eyes and goes to deal with whoever is out there causing the ruckus.

========

Ramsey's people, of course. Riled up and tearing through the ranks of Ryan's current employer with the kind of fury and rage they've become famous for when one of theirs is taken, is hurt.

Ryan watches it from the security room, guard dead at his feet with a bullet in his head.

He has no loyalty to his current employer, no ties. Not to someone like this, someone who double-deals and double-crosses. Don't think for a minute that Ryan didn't know what the idiot had planned for him once things were done here, but.

Ryan has a reputation to uphold. When Mogar reaches the floor the Golden Boy's on, he makes an appearance.

Puts on a show - just enough - before he vanishes in the chaos. Feels some little thread of satisfaction that the kid he met all those years ago has people who came for him this time. Who fought fiercely enough to actually push Ryan back a little, give him pause.

========

A year later and Ryan's being approached by Ramsey's people for a job. Golden Boy front and center, crooked little smile on his face as his gaze lands on Ryan.

Mogar and his crew at his at his back. Colorful figures with their own reputations, rumors, floating around the city.

Ryan cocks his head when the Golden Boy walks up to him, all the confidence in the world to him as he looks up at Ryan.

“You seem like a guy with a good head on his shoulders. What do you say to trying your luck with us for a bit? See if it's something you'd like?”

And Ryan?

Ryan laughs, and accepts.


End file.
